Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences
Brain-based Humanities
Probing the Humanistic Brain
Humanities research focuses on the most complex facets of the human experience. For example, the study of how values "personal, political, moral, legal, aesthetic" underlie our behavior and shape our beliefs is of central concern to humanists. Until recently, however, much of this experience lay far beyond the reach of experimental methods. Huge recent leaps in technology for probing brain activity now make it possible, for the first time, to connect detailed evidence about brain function to such complex human behaviors as how people evaluate risky choices, plan for their futures, act on the basis of ethical rules, and seek out aesthetic experience.
With the construction of a brain imaging center at Caltech, a group of humanists led by Steven Quartz is teaming with social scientists and biologists to create the intellectual foundation of a new interdisciplinary science: a brain-based humanities. Caltech has identified the intersection of brain sciences and humanities as an intellectual frontier with tremendous opportunity both in basic science terms and in terms of potential benefit to humankind. As a starting point for this emerging field of inquiry, Quartz and colleagues are investigating two critical elements of human mental life: our ability to reason about our selves as enduring entities over time and our ability to reason about others as like-minded. Philosophers have long speculated about the structure of the self, and these new brain imaging technologies will provide a means to test and extend these speculations. In addition, philosopher James Woodward plans to investigate how these human capacities underlie our moral reasoning, which will begin to provide a dialogue between experiment and philosophical theories of ethics.
Brain imaging also opens a window into the world of aesthetic experience. Together with Gabrielle Starr, a professor of English at New York University and a former Caltech instructor, Quartz recently initiated the Neural Aesthetics Project. The project uses MRI imaging and other techniques to probe the effects of aesthetic experience, such as listening to music or reading poetry, on brain processes, and to explore the relation between aesthetic experience and the brain's motivational systems. Quartz and Starr believe that aesthetic experience has an important role to play in motivating us to engage with and explore our environment. In addition, uncovering the neural basis of aesthetic experience will provide a new means of interpreting a rich humanistic literature on aesthetics. Other Caltech project collaborators include postdoctoral scholar Anne Hamker, who is working with the psychophysics laboratory of Shin Shimojo, professor of biology, to probe the emotional structure of aesthetic experience. In addition, Quartz believes that a better understanding of aesthetic experience and its role in human behavior might ultimately lead to new insights in designing both tasks and environments, a possibility that will be explored in a new course on Design and the Brain, which will involve the Humanities, the Engineering Division, and the Art Center College of Design.
